MIAMI – Venezuelan actress Monica Spear returns to her roots as the star of the telenovela “Flor Salvaje” (Wildflower), set to debut on Telemundo next week in primetime.

One of the series’ main attractions for Spear, who spent much of her childhood on her father’s ranch in her native Maracaibo, was the chance to play a character living close to nature.

“I remember that before they offered me the project, I told my dad that I longed to be back on a ranch, in touch with nature and surrounded by animals. I needed that smell of wet grass after the rain and feeling that wild creature we have inside,” she told Efe in a telephone interview from Colombia, where the series is in production.

In this adaptation for television of a novel by Laura Restrepo, the 27-year-old actress and model plays Amanda Monteverde, an innocent young girl who, after a family tragedy, flees with her three little sisters to a village where she meets three very different men.

There she has a love affair which is, as the novela’s title suggests, wild and pure. And, naturally, full of drama and exciting twists and turns of the plot.

“The role is very rich, very nuanced. And I didn’t get it by chance – I felt it was the universe that sent it to me,” the actress crowned Miss Venezuela 2004 said. EFE

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